. . . hanc culpam maiorem an illam dicam?

It just keeps coming.

Stifyn Emrys shows that he’s got his priorities in the right place by pondering:

How do we want to present ourselves to the world? How does the world at large view the Pagan community, and are we happy with the way people see us? The arrest of Pagan musician, artist and lecturer Kenny Klein has raised fears that others will shape the discussion to our detriment. Shortly after Klein was charged with possession of child pornography, many began to express concern online that, in the words of one commenter, “no doubt this will be thrown at us for years to come.”

Here’s a hint: it’s not that a Wiccan did something bad that’s going to come back and bite you guys in the ass – it’s how you’ve handled the situation since then.

Here’s another hint: start caring more for Mr. Klein’s victims than for “poor Kenny” who made his prison cot and deserves to lie in it for the rest of his mortal existence.

For instance here is jen z complaining about Anne Niven’s decision to pull Kenny’s column from PaganSquare:

I was sad to see this site decided to remove kenny’s old blog. censoring someone like that is wrong. Yes he did wrong, but to remove things that were done before is also wrong. I have seen the nasty bashing , and it makes me cry watching people turn judge and jury and get vicious. I will not be on this site, as censorship in the Pagan community is wrong.

A comment that was “liked” by Greybeard who went on to add:

The level of hate I saw on some forums yesterday was thoroughly disgusting. It is said that porn of one kind and another is the majority of Internet traffic and most of the reason for its existence. There are legions of on-line whores, pimps, pornographers, and just lonely young females sending selfies who prey on lonely men all the time. As your grandmother’s wisdom would advise, those who have never viewed erotic materials on some Internet channel may be saints, but they either don’t exist or just haven’t gotten around to it yet. Lets have more compassion and far less hate.

Which totally trumps Christine Kraemer and Peg Aloi’s victim-blaming.

Likewise when Taylor Ellwood of Immanion/Megalithica Press sensibly decided to axe The Flowering Rod, Kenny’s book on sexual ethics for young men, this decision was met with outrage from several folks:

I feel a bit odd about the idea of his books being pulled — unless his books actually suggest something as improper as his own actions, how does that make sense except in a knee-jerk political correct sense?

The man has been accused, not convicted. What you are calling his actions may not have actually happened. Pulling the books at this time is irresponsible.

it disturbs me that the pagan community acts SO fast before even a court conviction. I am not saying to act as if the man is perfectly trustworthy; but if the law says “innocent until proven guilty” it seems awry to me to immediately act and make statements about denying him income just because he might use it for legal defense. Everyone is entitled to legal defense, and frankly, better he can pay for it than it happen at taxpayer expense.

And from the same thread there’s Christian Day (of the Chawleeee incident) arguing:

It’s not about valuing the abuser over the claimant. It’s about not assuming the person IS an abuser until it is proven. Why do I just know that you’ve probably falsely accused a person or two in your day? I can’t think of why any reasonable person that would take testimony without scrutiny of any kind unless that person was a liar herself.

What these people seem to be forgetting is that this whole thing started with Kenny Klein confessing to several dozen charges of owning child pornography after a multi-month long sting operation. Unless it’s subsequently revealed that the police tortured a false confession out of him there’s no walking back from that.

Even neopagans who are critical of him seem to care too much about “poor Kenny’s” well-being:

He is making his living from being a Pagan author and musician, which cannot be that lucrative. Needless to say, the little bit of living he was able to make is going to disappear. I cannot fathom a Pagan gathering or venue that would welcome him at this point.

After what we’ve seen over the last couple days I’m honestly not so sure of that.

After all we’ve got people like Ted Czukor bemoaning the possible imposition of standards and structures in neopagansim as a result of this scandal:

Annika Mongan makes a wonderful point in her blog post of March 28, 2014 – namely, that public scandals in Christian communities have a particularly demoralizing impact on their members, because Conversion promised them that Faith and the Holy Spirit would make them spiritually healthier than the rest of the world. I agree, but I don’t think that Christians have a corner on those feelings. The same expectations, just expressed in different words, have applied to every spiritual community I have ever joined. My most recent Odyssey has brought me here, into the land of Paganism – where once again I expected to finally find the Promised Land of tolerance, love and acceptance; I mean, surely such a SMALL splinter-group of society, which had been put down, discriminated against and superstitiously feared for so many generations, would have created a haven for themselves where all would be welcomed – and judgments of prejudice and criticism would never be allowed!

How dare those “hard” “radical” “dangerous” “fundamentalist” people try to curtail our freedoms and criticize something like child molestation! The nerve!

Once again we turn to a polytheist – Ruadhán McElroy – for a reasonable take on this issue:

I also contend that not only are those who still keep crying out “Let’s stop calling Klein a pagan — think of how this must make us look to the EEEEBIL XTIANS!!!!” are not only enablers of abuse, but are worthy of ostracism on the grounds of caring more about appearance than about basic right and wrong. After all, for the last thirty-some years, people in the pagan community have cared about the public perception of paganism more than the potential victims accusing potential abusers of abuse –and look where it got us.

However, just because polytheists have been coming out staunchly against this does not mean that our community is immune to such evils. We should not permit ourselves to get wrapped up in schadenfreude and complacency. In the comments to my post Sannion’s Solution Ivy came up with a host of even better solutions, some of which were specifically tailored for the pan-pagan festival scene:

And in addition to the usual ‘code of conduct’ the festival will create an incident response guide for how issues are to be handled. This should be based on the laws in the specific state where the festival is taking place, including age of consent laws, public nudity, and public intoxication. That way, when there is an incident there is a defined process for handling it. This should including how to treat the victims of any crime (from theft to assault) as well as the accused and when local law enforcement must be involved. This should be made available to all staff and requesting participants.

Let’s come up with even more ideas, share them with others (particularly those making frustrated posts about this incident) and most importantly of all, let’s start implementing these ideas and make the safety of our most vulnerable members a top priority.

In fact I’d like to see a panel at the Polytheist Leadership Conference where we can put our minds together, address this issue and come up with some tangible steps to stop predation and abuse in our respective traditions and communities.